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Welcome to the New Healthcare Law Center and State News

The new healthcare law, called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), represents comprehensive healthcare reform legislation signed into law on March 23, 2010. It contains numerous provisions designed to protect consumers and promote low cost medical insurance, including many new taxes to pay for the cost.

In this section of the site, you can also obtain the following information specific to your state: available medical insurance options, efforts to regulate medical insurance premiums, healthcare, the individual medical insurance marketplace and the new healthcare law.

Our objective is to help Americans make sense of the new healthcare law by explaining key provisions in plain English and assisting individuals, families and the self-employed in using this information to find and secure affordable medical insurance.

Health Saving Accounts (HSAs) paired with a high deductible medical insurance plan have significantly gained in popularity over the past several years for self employed individuals, families and employers of all sizes. These consumer driven health plans (CDHPs) offer low cost medical insurance and often lower out of pockets costs than traditional health insurance plans. In 2005, total HSA enrollment was only 1 million persons, while 11.4 million individuals as of January 2011 were enrolled in an HSA coupled with a high [...]

Health insurance companies are now required to post explanations of premium increases of 10% or more and submit them for review to state and federal regulators. This mandate is required by the new healthcare law. By requiring health insurance companies to justify premium increases, there is greater price transparency and increased public pressure to keep rates lower in order to avoid bad press. The new law still has a loophole though. Even if government officials consider the premium increase unjustified, the [...]

Prescription monitoring systems in Kentucky and Ohio will now be linked to try to help doctors and law enforcement officers reduce health insurance fraud in order to keep medical insurance affordable. “Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting,” or KASPER, will be linked with Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, or OARRS. Gov. Steve Beshear announced Monday that doctors and law enforcement officers in both states will be able to access prescription drug records from each other. The monitoring systems are used to [...]

Having adequate, affordable medical insurance is essential because it helps ensure access to quality healthcare and helps pay for the high cost of medical services, supplies, surgery and hospitalization. You and your dependents may be eligible for one or more of the following alternatives in Ohio: Medical insurance for young adults less than age 26 – Ohio Under the new healthcare law, called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), effective September 2010, young adults covered their parent’s medical insurance [...]

The oversight of individual, self-employed and small employer medical insurance happens at the state level. Since every state has its own unique set of regulations aimed at maintaining low cost medical insurance, the laws governing health insurance contracts vary dramatically. Some states have the authority to disapprove a health insurance company’s premium increase, while others simply review rates but do not have the authority to reject an increase. The laws also differ based on the type of medical insurance policy offered [...]

Ohio ranked 34th in the nation for health status in 2010. Health is a result of our behaviors, our individual genetic predisposition to disease, the environment and the community in which we live, the clinical care we receive and the policies and practices of our health care and prevention systems. Each of us, individually, as a community, and as a society, strives to optimize these health determinants, so that all of us can have a long, disease-free and robust life [...]